POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Pannonian]

Can someone explain why Maine's 4 electoral votes are split between 3 for Biden and 1 for Trump?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Can someone explain why Maine's 4 electoral votes are split between 3 for Biden and 1 for Trump?

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states which do not award winner take all for the entire state.

Maine dedicates two points to overall winner of the state, and then gives each congressional district within Maine (there are two) a single point for the winner of that district.
Biden won the vote in District 2 and he won it by such a margin that he also won the overall state count. He lost the other district which went for Trump (it's more rural), so it was split 3 to 1.

[Montmorency]

https://twitter.com/profmusgrave/sta...48875397378048

Liberals want to evict an elderly, financially troubled Covid survivor and his family from inner-city public housing

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states which do not award winner take all for the entire state.

Maine dedicates two points to overall winner of the state, and then gives each congressional district within Maine (there are two) a single point for the winner of that district.
Biden won the vote in District 2 and he won it by such a margin that he also won the overall state count. He lost the other district which went for Trump (it's more rural), so it was split 3 to 1.

And Biden exchanged it for one in Nebraska. I believe this is actually the first ever election in which the split-district system has produced a split in a state' electors.


Incidentally, I checked the Generic Ballot (overall balance of polling for the House elections) and the same pattern as above appears, namely that the results conform to the polling if you redistribute all the Undecideds to the Republicans, adjusting post-hoc for the small third party share of less than 2%. (With the caveat that as blue states like California and New York release their tallies next week, the Democratic vote share will increase.)

This wasn't quite what happened in 2016, since there were so many Undecideds (and third party voters) that many of them did come to Clinton - they just broke for Trump overall. As far as I'm seeing with 2020 polling, the Undecided-to-Trump/Republican vote is something like 90 to 100% of them (without third party), or maybe 50% Trump/Republican, 40% third party, very roughly. There shouldn't be a reflex to simply categorize Undecideds as de-facto Republicans going forward, since it's quite possible this phenomenon is an artifact of living under Trump. But I will struggle to resist looking at future polling through the lens of Undecided = Republican.

This should also underscore that, contrary to liberal fixations, third parties routinely siphon vastly more votes from Republicans than they do from Democrats. It's a justifiable outrage, but there's maybe 1 election in American history where a third party clearly harmed Democrats*: 2000 Naderism.

Libertarians definitely cost Trump Georgia and Arizona for example.

*Arguably also George Wallace in 1968, but that reflected an actual schism within the party and those white Southerners promptly switched to Republicans permanently under Nixon.

[Hooahguy]

After seeing all the celebrations today I only wish that John Lewis would have been able to see this. I'm not a particularly religious person but if there is a heaven then I'd like to think he is proud of us, especially his fellow Georgians.

Also shoutout to electing our first woman VP. Big day.

Edit: a beautiful video that aired on Irish tv.

[ReluctantSamurai]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-garden-centre

On Saturday morning, as Trump played golf and continued to baselessly accuse the Democrats of stealing the election for Joe Biden, he announced, in a Tweet since deleted, that there would be a “Big press conference” at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia.
That was quickly clarified, however. It was not the noted hotel, but Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a suburban business situated between a crematorium and an adult book store on the outskirts of the city.

[Crandar]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-garden-centre

[edyzmedieval]

A very good article from NYT outlining the path to the White House. Long read but excellent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/u...president.html

[drone]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-garden-centre

I heard about this Saturday, and the question of "How does this even happen?" has been swirling in my head all day long. Yes, Rudy is obviously off the rails, yes the campaign has been run fairly incompetently so far, but there hasn't been any kind of official explanation/blame shift for this embarrassment. But it finally hit me tonight: after this election is put to bed and all the campaign paperwork filed, there will be a line item in the Trump campaign expense report that says something like "Four Seasons - press conference room rental: $10000". The campaign org is broke, and he is still soliciting donations for the legal fight (60% of which are going towards campaign debt payoff). This is either a way to hide money already grifted from the campaign coffers, or a fresh grab. Whoever gets to audit the books is going to have a maze of these shenanigans to cut through. I hope all the lawyers working to "stop the steal" got paid in advance...

[Montmorency]

As a purely technical matter, I imagine every state issues non-driver's ID (I have one myself), which they should also accept as a valid ID for voting registration.

Also, no one who doesn't have a residence or other connection to Georgia should actually move there to vote in one election. It's a high-cost measure that could bring legal scrutiny.